STEVE CHAPMAN
It’s about trust and empowerment, the newly minted Edith Cowan University vice-chancellor tells Helen Shield.
Best career break?
A NATO fellowship to travel to the US. It was an exhilarating experience being in a place like MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). There were brilliant people around you, above my floor were two Nobel prize winners. It was just absolutely great but really confirmed that an academic life and a life doing research was what I was going to do.
Describe your leadership style.
If you put trust in people they will pay you back many times over. They feel empowered and they want to demonstrate that the trust you put in them was worthwhile. So I would describe my style as delegative. Clearly you should be there to back them up. I’ve found empowered leadership teams can deliver incredible things.
How do you lead in a new place?
Before you can truly lead an institution, truly represent it, you need to get under the skin. You need to know, if I want to do this is the institution capable? Does it have the desire? The only way you can determine that is to meet the people (and) start forming relationships with them. When people realise you respect their professionalism they can get on with it. I don’t know how to run nursing. I don’t know how to run the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. There are people here who do. And you have to empower them.
Best way to improve productivity?
My strong belief — and this comes from bringing up teenagers — is incentivisation is hugely powerful. It’s much better just to say if you do this then good things will follow. If someone does something willingly because they enjoy it, because they are having a good experience, the productivity is huge. It goes back to trust.
What is the business case for tertiary education?
I’ve come from outside Australia and I have been running a university (Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh) that had overseas campuses, in Dubai and Malaysia, and my biggest competitors were . . . Australian universities. Most people in the higher education sector know but most people in the general public do not know just how highly esteemed Australian higher education is around the world. So it’s really a bit shocking to see how the politics of things in terms of the higher education sector reform is going at the moment. Whatever side of the debate you are on . . . we have great uncertainty and so it’s very difficult to have a firm business case. The business case for Australian universities is positive — you have a very good product, hugely respected around the world. I guess my plea would be, let’s sort it out.
Do you use social media?
I use Facebook and Skype. Now that I’m here I couldn’t live without Skype. What a wonderful world it is with technology. I can get home, bang it on, eat my tea and my daughter can be having her breakfast in Edinburgh. (His family joins him in July). How do you spend your spare time? I go to every WAAPA performance I can, which I thoroughly enjoy. I am exploring the Mindarie area (where he lives) and rather than drive, I walk a lot. It’s beautiful. I do like my food and wine. I like reading, so I keep myself busy.
What was the last book you read?
Tracks (by Robyn Davidson) about the lady who goes across Australia on a camel and it’s been made into a major movie. And the book I read before that was Down Under by Bill Bryson. It’s hilarious. Everything he seems to encounter in Australia at the start is wishing to kill him. Tracks is really good because it gives you a feel for the centre, for the desert, for Aboriginal culture. She starts in Darwin and ends up on the coast in WA.
Favourite holiday destination?
Italy. I love it. I love the food, the wine, the art, the architecture, the hilltop towns and the Italians, the laid-back approach. If you are a northern European you behave — but nobody behaves in southern Europe. The walking country in Italy is fabulous. You have got lakes, you have got mountains, you have got coast.
What is the best way for the Australian tertiary sector to face significant funding challenges?
Australia has such a good global place, and we shouldn’t underestimate that — US, UK, Australia — that’s it for the English speaking nations. Other countries are starting to come in but Australia is a major player. However, there is major investment going in to many South-East Asian universities, Chinese universities — they are putting real money in — and we shouldn’t ignore that. If you look at the league tables there are universities that are not that old in South-East Asia that are way up there because they are being heavily funded — they are able to bring back really, really good people and they are teaching in English to take that market, so it’s going to become increasingly competitive. It’s going to become hard to maintain your position in that market and it’s a big — we are talking billions here, this is massive, for the Australian economy — it’s probably the fourth-biggest export we have got. To maintain that we need good levels of funding and we need clear direction from government. Not messing about and people blocking things. We need clear direction because we could lose that position.
